The Inspiron Mini 9 (and World of Warcraft performance)

UPDATED 12/31/2008: I have confirmed that it it possible to simply drag-and-drop a fully-qualified WoW installation folder onto a storage device of your choosing and run the game on the Mini 9 without a native install, which pretty much nullifies a lot of my points below :-) Enjoy.

UPDATED 12/6/2008: YouTube video demonstrating WoW performance on the Mini 9 is now included below this article.

Just short of a year ago, I jumped on the new bandwagon of "netbook" PCs -- laptop computers that offer just enough horsepower to do 90% of the things the average consumer would need to do with a computer on the road. A tiny form-factor and low price round out what makes for a very desirable portable computing package for on-the-go users. I loved the Eee PC that I bought last year, but I bought it knowing that this market would just be taking off, and that it would not be long until this category offered more.

Lo and behold, just barely a year later, "netbook" has become an ubiquitous category of PCs right next to desktops and laptops. With many more options available to me in recent memory, I made a point to save up for a new netbook... with my eyes set on the Inspiron Mini 910 from Dell.

My overall impressions of the mini are good so far. The display is extremely crisp, and leaps and bounds better than the 800 x 480 display on my Eee PC in terms of crispness and resolution. The keyboard is smaller than I expected, but still greatly usable. Weight, size, ports - all comparable to the original Eee PC 701 that I toted around for the last year. So far, a good move I think.

One thing that I never even considered with my Eee PC was gaming, at least, 3D gaming. Netbooks are not designed to be portable power house gaming platforms, but I thought I would give my Inspiron Mini a few tests to see what it can reasonably handle, and I'll start with something rather interesting: "World of Warcraft."

The Mini has been out for about a month as of this writing, and I have not been able to find any reliable information regarding the performance of WoW on this netbook. I took it upon myself to install WoW on this machine (sort of) and give it a whirl... and my results are below!

World of Warcraft performance on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9

My Mini 9 is configured as below (some of these specs are standard across the line -- I opted to buy the highest-end model):

• Intel Atom 1.6 GHz CPU
• 1 GB Memory
• 16 GB SSD
• 1024 x 600 pixel display
• Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
• Windows XP (SP3)
  

This netbook meets or exceeds the WoW system requirements in all but one area: the graphics card. Integrated graphics were never meant to power serious 3D games, but luckily WoW is not a terribly demanding 3D game anyway. Anywho, my setup process:

• I installed Virtual Clone Drive 5 in order to have a mountable virtual DVD-ROM drive. This is a huge benefit for netbooks, which generally don't have optical drives.

• I used an external 20 GB 5400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive that I have lying around to install the game on. It's actually the hard disk drive from an older ARCHOS MP3 player that I mounted in a slimline case with a USB 2.0 controller chip.

• Using a flash drive with the World of Warcraft CD ISOs and Virtual Clone Drive to mount them, I installed the game to the 20 GB external drive. I *could* have installed the game to the 16 GB internal SSD just fine, but WoW is a game that grows substantially every so often, and the 16 GB drive would fill up rather fast. It's also worth nothing that after formatting and installing Windows, the internal SSD is down to around 10.4 GB free -- sort of pushing it for WoW as it is, pre-Lich King.

• The initial install to the external HDD took about an hour, after which I loaded all the WoW update files and patches from my desktop PC into the WoW directory on the external HDD. After reconnecting it to my Mini, I started up WoW and let the patches do their thing. This saved a LOT of download time on my part, and kept the rather large patch files off the internal SSD.

• After two hours of patching (give or take), WoW was up to date and ready to be played.

Upon starting up WoW, it was a pleasant surprise to see the 600 vertical pixels of the Mini's screen filled with bright, crisp, fairly-smooth colors. The title screen isn't too demanding, however, so I wasn't really impressed yet.

After I jumped into my realm, Bladefist, I was greeted with a much different view...

WoW defaulted to running at 800 x 600 (stretched) with most detail sliders at their lowest setting. Upon walking around Winterspring a bit, I noticed an average frame rate of about 15 to 20 fps... not great, but on a tiny machine like this, certainly usable. I also made the following changes to improve performance:

• While you can play the game widescreen at the native 1024 x 600 resolution, you will save about 5 fps by keeping it at 800 x 600. If the 800x600 stretched display annoys you, go to the Intel Graphics Properties dialog box, choose the 'Display Settings' tab, and click on 'Aspect Ratio Options.' Select 'Maintain Aspect Ratio' (the top of the three options). This will keep any non-native resolution locked to its normal aspect ratio.

• Turn down ALL the detail sliders in WoW. The Mini 9 isn't a power house PC, and it wasn't meant to play games for long periods of time, so I hope the lack of detail will be forgivable in this situation.

• Disable Full-Screen Glow Effect and Death Effect.

• Turn off V-Sync. This is another performance hog that will save a few frames.

By this point, WoW should be running in an 800 x 600, cropped left-and-right fullscreen display that gets between 10 to 30 fps, depending on the population of the local area. Open fields, such as Mulgore or Arathi Highlands will easily see the 30 fps mark, while trudging through Stormwind on a busy weekend will turn the game into a slideshow. But realistically, you can expect an average of 15 to 20 fps overall, which certainly makes short quests, quick travel, and Auction House checks more than worth the effort.

As a side note, I doubt you would see much of a performance boost from installing WoW internally. A large SD card might up performance slightly, but hard disk read speed isn't the limiting factor in getting WoW to run reasonably well on the Mini 9. I'm more than happy with a USB 2.0 external drive, and if you have a spare one lying around, getting WoW to run shouldn't be trouble at all.

If nothing else, it's pretty damn neat to see a game like WoW functioning and playable on a computer so small.

B3 out.

Update: Video that follows demonstrates a quick play session on the Mini 9.